Are You Trying to Fool Me?

Okay, there's been a long, long time since my last post. I am sorry, I have been a little bit lazy lately. But now I am a couple of days out of the office and thought it would be a good idea to drop a few lines to LTTMMA.

This time, I remembered how much people trying to make me a fool annoys me. Unfortunately, seems to me that this happens everywhere and from all kinds of people and corporations. They whether think we are all stupid or they are stupid themselves to imagine that no one would be able to identify that they are trying to fool everybody.

"Man, what are you talking about?" you would ask. Okay, I can think of some examples, as I always do, to explain what lies inside my sick brain. They are all examples from recent experiences and are all related to large corporations. But I am sure you readers will be able to connect them to your own experiences and to some individuals' actions as well.

Toothpaste - The first situation I can remember is the famous toothpaste tube case. I was told this story a couple of years ago and tried to find some references on the Interweb but wasn't able to find many. I am sorry. Well, to make a long story short, this major toothpaste manufacturer was experiencing a severe drop on toothpaste sales figures on the post-war period [citation needed]. Their ingenuous solution was to increase the diameter of the toothpaste tube outlet, hoping that their customers would still cover the length of the toothbrush with paste, therefore consuming more, unaware of the less-than-orthodox strategies of the manufacturer. Unfortunately or not, it seems to have worked.

TP (1) - Toilet paper is probably the heaven for unethical companies to try to fool their loyal customers, due to the many variables involved in the price model of this kind of good (texture, length, width, weight, etc.). First, there was the Scott versus Neve controversy here in Brazil. Both are Kimberly-Clark toilet paper brands here in Brazil and they seem [unverified] to have the same qualities. When Scott was first released, it was supposedly a less expensive option when compared to Neve. However, rolls of Neve always had 40m of TP and Scott was released with just a 20m roll option. As you may already figured out, it was not half of the price. There is a law here that will force the manufacturer to clearly state changes on the quantity on the packaging of an already-marketed product. That was not the case for new products and KC may have used that to release Scott.

TP (2) - On the other side of the spectrum, the Mirafiori toilet paper brand, made by Manikraft, had its length increased from 40m to 50m but the price didn't jump up 25%. Interesting, isn't it? Packaging costs? Tube costs? Don't think so. I actually weighted the old, 40m version and the new, 50m Mirafiori, just to find out that the new one weights almost the same as the old one (to be fair, it weights 5-10% more). Width was the same (it is regulated), but the weight of the paper was considerably reduced and you could literally feel it. Of course, they put a huge "NOW WITH 50 METERS" note on the packaging.

Voting Machine - As you may already know, I work for a large company here in Brazil. Our cafeteria is HUGE and they serve thousands of meals everyday. The cafeteria is outsourced and this French group, Sodexo is the responsible for the restaurant. Food isn't great, but this is not relevant for today's story. As part of their Service Level check, Sodexo installed an electronic voting booth on the way out of the cafeteria with the question: "How was the food today?". Great, isn't it? When I got this job, back in 2000, the voting machine was already there and it had three simple options:

BAD

FAIR

GOOD

Well, a few years later, they realized that the results were not that great and probably hired consultants to tell them how could they get better results from the voting machine, without spending much money making better food. As you could expect from good consultants, the solution was brilliant and highly effective. They added a fourth button to the voting machine, to make it look like this:

BAD

FAIR

GOOD

EXCELLENT

Why would they add the "AWFUL" button if they could add the "EXCELLENT" option and also increase their chances of getting better results? Well, that forced me to always vote on the "BAD" option, regardless of the food quality. I was still being honest I'd say 85% of the time though. And it stayed like that until the beginning of this year, when the machine was replaced by a fancy computer with a touch screen with the fifth option, "AWFUL", added. I could vote honestly again, at last! I don't really know why, but it lasted not more than a couple of months until the equipment was labeled "UNDER MAINTENANCE" and came back with the fifth "AWFUL" option removed. Now we have a fancy touch screen computer with just the "BAD", "FAIR", "GOOD" and "EXCELLENT" options again. You know what button I am pushing now.